Police should target more serious offenders

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DO the Hong Kong Police not have anything better to do than write out parking tickets in obscure areas where the cars are not obstructing traffic or pedestrians? The receipt of yet another ticket on South Bay Close across from the Hong Kong International School prompts this letter.

This area is not a hotbed of traffic offenders and criminals. We are just parents trying to drop off or fetch our children from their gymnastics class inside a church.

At 4.30 pm this street looks as if it is a virtual ghost town apart from the departing construction workers in the area.

I am a holder of two valid foreign driving licences, and a spotless record for 23 years having driven throughout the US and Europe.

It is baffling coming to this colony and being inundated with tickets. Where are the international 'no parking' signs? Why are broken parking meters not marked 'broken' in English too? According to my calendar this is still a British colony.

I am well aware of the old story that if it is not marked 'parking' then it means 'no parking'. But does this hold true for the chauffeurs of those most revered luxury cars that appear to create bottlenecks wherever they feel like parking? Hong Kong seems to be loaded with no spitting or littering signs in the city but I have yet to see any perpetrators of these offences ticketed. If the police wish to fill their coffers I can think of many more lucrative ways. Why don't they start issuing tickets at the public beaches for littering? They could start fining bus drivers who, with their engines idling, spew out toxic emissions as they sit waiting for their tour groups to finish groping through Stanley.

Or how about actually issuing tickets for real life-threatening traffic violators? I think we all have seen one too many a reckless truck, bus, and hot-rodding driver who really needs to have a licence revoked.

This place reeks of environmental pollution, corruption, greed, and a general laissez-faire attitude towards the future. You are barking up the proverbial wrong tree if you think continuously ticketing one banged-up little Mazda will cure the ills in this society.